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The ethos of impact investing for positive change seems tailor-made to tackle the devastating repercussions of the coronavirus crisis as states buckle and a recession looms, but cometh the hour, cometh the family impact investor?

The ethos of impact investing for positive change seems tailor-made to tackle the devastating repercussions of the coronavirus crisis as states buckle and a recession looms, but cometh the hour, cometh the family impact investor?

The $502 billion impact space is where investments are made with the aim of generating measurable environmental or social impacts while giving a competitive financial return. The strategy has been increasingly attractive to families of sustainable wealth since the Rockefeller Foundation first coined the term in 2008.

Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, who served as the British Ambassador to China and later wrote a memoir titled Diplomat in Peace and War recalled the following conversation: “Before I left England for China in 1936 a friend told me that there exists a Chinese curse—‘May you live in interesting times’. If so, our generation has certainly witnessed that curse’s fulfilment.

Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, who served as the British Ambassador to China and later wrote a memoir titled Diplomat in Peace and War recalled the following conversation: “Before I left England for China in 1936 a friend told me that there exists a Chinese curse—‘May you live in interesting times’. If so, our generation has certainly witnessed that curse’s fulfilment.

The year of 2019 was one when many of the six impossible things before breakfast remain unresolved—with the shining exception of Brexit, and the wider resolution of domestic politics. We can still feel the political earthquake which struck the UK last month—we cannot yet see the effect of it. Most political earthquakes, when they happen, are scarcely discerned, and even those which are perceived for what they are, do not easily reveal the new pathways created from the changed landscape.

The year of 2019 was one when many of the six impossible things before breakfast remain unresolved—with the shining exception of Brexit, and the wider resolution of domestic politics. We can still feel the political earthquake which struck the UK last month—we cannot yet see the effect of it. Most political earthquakes, when they happen, are scarcely discerned, and even those which are perceived for what they are, do not easily reveal the new pathways created from the changed landscape.